The present invention generally relates to real estate evaluations, and more particularly to identifying an optimal real estate property among alternatives.
Generally, real estate properties are offered for sale by sellers through real estate brokers. Typically, the real estate broker prepares information about the property using a form developed by the brokerage company or by a local multiple listing service that describes the property in a prescribed way. This description is generally referred to as a listing. Listings are customarily stored in a search pool of a computerized system that maintains information regarding properties for sale. Several of these computer systems include techniques by which listing information is retrieved from the search pool by price, type, property address or zip code. Typically, these systems sort the search pool of properties and present properties within a defined range based on a predefined sort selection.
For example, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,754,850 to Jansen, a method and apparatus is provided for a search system based in software running on a personal computer. In the search system, selection features are selected and a search based upon these search features is performed. Items neither satisfying or closely satisfying the search features of the search are eliminated from the search.
Although the above systems identify real estate properties that meet predefined criteria, there is an increasing need for improved searching techniques in markets where there are large populations of available properties for sale. For example, computer systems of the prior art using predefined sort selection criteria can present enormous quantities of properties based on the number of available properties for sale. Real estate salespeople are finding it increasingly difficult to discriminate the total number of available properties for sale retrieved from these systems to effectively serve their customers.
More recently, to address this problem, real estate brokers have begun limiting the population of available properties for sale by focusing their search on a small number of buildings where they can present themselves as a building specialist. Although this approach allows the broker to develop a universe of alternative properties which are more manageable, limiting the dimension of such searches does not effectively serve real estate customers. As such, an improved technique for analyzing a large number of available real estate properties based on multiple criteria is sorely needed.